


Dammit, Jim

by demetyr



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Community: st_xi_kink, Gen, I made Bones cry, M/M, Other, i did a bad thing, it's a 5+1 kind of prompt, so the K/S is mostly a background thing it's not really the focus, there is kind of implied sexy things?, this is a prompt fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3658599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demetyr/pseuds/demetyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In response to a request at the st_xi_kink community: "Kirk/McCoy; The 5 times Bones saved Kirk’s life and the 1 time he couldn’t. The first 5 can have “happy endings” but I want to be crying by the last one."</p>
<p>It turned out more Gen (and K/S) than Kirk/McCoy.... oops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dammit, Jim

**_The first time it was a split second decision that changed everything._ **

Not everyone would think of it this way, but Jim knows that Bones saved his life by smuggling him onto the _Enterprise_. Okay, so the mud flea vaccine had a really bad reaction. And arguing with Spock (twice) had been a (doubly) bad idea. But Bones had _gotten Jim onto the ship_. The ship that became his job, his life. Without the _Enterprise_ , Jim would be nothing. And he wouldn’t have the _Enterprise_ if Bones hadn’t stuck him with all those blasted hyposprays and smuggled him onboard before everything went to hell.

So yeah, Jim kind of owes Bones his life for that one.

 

**_The second time it was because somebody (with a working self-preservation instinct) had to be watching over the idiot._ **

“Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not your personal bodyguard,” McCoy groused as he dragged his over-sexed captain away from what appeared to be an incredibly attractive alien female. Jim, naturally, did not appreciate McCoy’s life-saving intervention, and made his complaints well known as McCoy had them both beamed back to the _Enterprise_.

“Bones, come on!”

“Jim, did you even bother to listen to Spock’s report on the people here?”

“Since when do you use Spock as a reliable source?” Jim asked, blinking at McCoy as they stepped down from the transporter pad.

“Jim,” McCoy said with infinite patience, “the females on this planet ritually take their partner’s testicles after sex.”

Jim stared up at McCoy, horror registering on his face. “They _what?_ ” he demanded as he reflexively clapped a protective hand over his balls. McCoy just gave him a look. Jim swallowed heavily, then clasped McCoy’s shoulder with one hand. “Bones,” he said in a shocked voice, “you just saved my life.”

And McCoy shot his captain a glare, because only Jim would center his existence around intergalactic _sex_.

 

**_The third time it was filed under ‘blackmail material.’_ **

When he heard what mess Jim had gotten himself into this time, the first thing Leonard McCoy did was laugh his ass off for about five minutes. The second thing he did was have a drink in toast to the fabulous irony of the universe. What he did simultaneously to both these activities was arrange a rescue party. And then go back to laughing.

So when Jim was deposited in sickbay a few hours later, Bones couldn’t help but greet his disgruntled and ruffled captain with a grin. Of course, he got a rather black glare in response, which only made Bones’ grin widen.

“Did you _have_ to send the team with those pictures?” Jim asked petulantly as he watched Bones approach, hypospray in hand.

“Saved your life, didn’t they?”

“But _those_ pictures?” And the hissed embarrassment in Jim’s voice just set Bones off laughing again.

“They were going to use you as a _virgin sacrifice_ , Jim; you!”

“ _Bones!_ ”

 

**_The fourth time it was almost reciprocal, in a way._ **

“Okay, I realize you have a reputation to uphold, but _dammit_ , Jim, if you can’t start actually _thinking_ before you start a fight with an alien that outweighs you by a hundred pounds and has _five extra limbs_ and _natural pyrokinesis_ – ”

“He insulted my crew.”

Bones paused in the middle of administering yet another hypospray to the pulverized man before him. For a moment, he contemplated the mulish blue eyes before him, and then pressed the needle of the hypospray gently to Jim’s neck. Maybe Jim did have a valid reason for _this_ fight; Bones knew how protective the kid was about anyone in the crew of the _Enterprise_ , especially of himself and the bridge crew.

“Even so!” he started back up after a moment, though both of them could hear the change in his voice, the lack of true heat or irritation. “Can’t you pick a fight with someone your own size?”

“Aww, Bones, you’ll just put me back together anyways.” Jim grinned at his CMO unrepentantly. “You and your hypos.”

Just because he could, Bones gave Jim an extra hypospray.

“ _Ow!_ Dammit, Bones!”

 

**_The fifth time just barely walked the line between professional interest and a need for brain bleach._ **

When Jim came limping into his office, McCoy couldn’t really say he hadn’t been expecting this. It was a little worrisome, as he’d thought they would have _seven_ years before having to deal with this again, but no, the universe was proving steady with its habit of screwing over Captain James Tiberius Kirk or even First Officer Spock (and in this case, literally) and making McCoy the one to put them back together again in one way or another. There was a lot of jury-rigged cures involved in keeping the crew of the U.S.S _Enterprise_ in good condition.

“Three years, huh?” McCoy asked with a sigh, thought it was really more of a rhetorical question than anything else. Jim still nodded in reply, and winced – just slightly – as he sat down in the chair McCoy offered. “S’pose we should have expected that the universe would make things different. Here,” he said, pulling open a drawer and taking out a rather large bottle. “I think you two are going to need this a lot more than my surplus drawer.”

Jim took the bottle of lube with an expression of gratitude. “Thanks, Bones. You’re a life saver.”

“Don’t mention it. No, really, don’t. What you and that pointy-eared hobgoblin do is your own business and you hardly keep me in enough booze to forget all the times I _do_ have to know.”

Jim laughed, and saluted McCoy with the lube before getting (carefully) to his feet and making his way out of McCoy’s office, most likely back to his own quarters and the biologically sex-crazed Vulcan waiting for him. 

†††††

**_And the only time there was nothing to do but wait._ **

Bones sat dry-eyed in his office, eyes staring blankly at nothing, but his mind supplied all the images he would need. Jim, in his vibrant, golden, always moving self with that unrepentant grin combined with tousled blonde hair and boyishly mischievous blue eyes, running roughshod over the galaxy… juxtaposed by the obscene travesty that was the still figure lying in a biobed in sickbay.

Bones wished he could cry. His best friend was dying, _in Bones’ own sickbay_ , and he couldn’t cry. He’d cried over his ex-wife (just because he divorced her didn’t mean he didn’t care about her). Granted, Jim had gotten him really drunk that night, but still. He’d cried for his divorce.

And after the Narada incident, when Bones had been up to his elbows in putting people back together and trying to forget the graveyard image of broken ships and a planet dissolving in on itself, Jim had once more gotten Bones stupefyingly drunk, and they had cried together over the deaths and destruction of millions. Every mission thereafter, whenever they lost someone, Jim would come to Bones’ office and they would drink, and more often than not tears would be shed, but it would be cathartic and they would both be the better for it.

So, apparently Bones couldn’t cry unless he was shit-faced drunk. Which was something of a pity, because he was pretty sure there wasn’t enough booze in existence to get him drunk enough that he would actually be able to let his grief go and find any kind of catharsis for this.

“God _dammit_ , Jim,” Bones whispered to the empty silence of his office.

Always, _always_ had Bones been able to whip out a hypospray or some other cure, and just… patch his captain back together again. Even with the space herpes thing (which had had _everybody_ in an uproar because apparently it wasn’t just sexually transmitted), which had been pretty nasty, all it had taken were a couple rounds of a brand new vaccine, courtesy of one Doctor Leonard McCoy. Or when Jim got himself beat up (another regular occurrence) Bones had always been able to put him back together again.

He’d always warned Jim that one day he’d come across something he couldn’t bounce back from, but dammit, even he hadn’t really believed it. Because Bones could save Jim from pretty much anything and everything in the universe, and even then those things had to usually get past Spock and the rest of the crew of the _Enterprise_ before getting to Jim.

Unfortunately, the one thing, the _only_ thing Bones couldn’t save his captain – his _friend_ – from was himself.

No one was really sure how it happened. Not even Spock, who had been right there the entire time. It had been a relatively routine diplomatic mission, and pretty much a cakewalk, even with Jim’s penchant for trouble. But then things turned south, and someone important insulted someone else important and one of the away team tried to mediate but _that_ just made things worse and suddenly people were demanding _satisfaction_ and Jim decided to be noble and responsible at the worst moment possible.

Things went really downhill from there, and the next thing Bones knows is there’s a frantic transmission from the away team, demanding to be beamed aboard and that Doctor McCoy have his best team standing by. All of which Bones interpreted as, essentially, “DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON” but with “Jim Kirk” instead of “Will Robinson,” and a really, really, really bad feeling settled itself, cold and heavy and metallic, in the pit of his stomach.

That feeling only got worse the closer Bones got to the transporter room, and by the time he got there, so had the away team, and that metallic sensation moved straight from his gut to his heart when he saw the limp form cradled in Spock’s arms. Now, it wasn’t the first time Bones had seen Spock bring an unconscious Jim back on board, but it was the first time Bones had seen an obviously upset Spock do so. In fact, in McCoy really had to put a name to the expression that twisted the First Officer’s face, he would have called it heartbreak.

All of this did not encourage him to feel better about this situation. Finding out how things had gone down only cemented things.

The ‘satisfaction’ that the crazy natives had demanded involved drinking some kind of noxious mixture that was apparently merely sickening to their kind. That same, ‘merely sickening’ drink turned out to be lethal in humans. It was also an unknown substance, and when asked, the natives had said there was no antidote.

It was pretty clear what was going to happen after that. So Bones had quietly put away his tools, hooked Jim up to the good stuff, and then gone into his office when Spock had come into sickbay, heading for the captain. Bones had been sitting there ever since, staring at nothing but the images his mind pulled up and replayed for him. He had no idea how long he sat there, but eventually he dragged his numb body out of his chair. He had to check on Jim; though there was nothing he could do, he could at least make this as painless as possible. It was the least he owed to his friend.

When he got to Jim’s bed, Jim was awake. Spock was still there, and holding Jim’s hand. Or was Jim holding Spock’s hand? Bones couldn’t tell, and didn’t care at this point.

“Hey…Bones.”

Bones felt the urge to cry again as he heard the small, cracked, whisper of a voice that came out of Jim’s mouth. But he wasn’t drunk enough for that.

“You idiot,” Bones said instead, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to keep from reaching out and trying to physically hold Jim’s life in his body. “Why the hell did you have to go and be responsible now?” Jim gave a tired smile in reply.

“Someone… had…” Jim broke off into not quite a cough, but Bones could hear the death rattle in Jim’s breathing. Spock could, too, if his pained expression – _Facial expressions,_ Bones wondered abstractly. _Pointy-eared bastard really does have ‘em. Hell of a way to find out_ – was anything to go by.

“ – care… of her, Spock,” Jim was saying in his thin, whispery voice. “Good people. Good… people. Take… care of them… Commander…” Spock’s shoulders tensed, and Bones suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, like there was a starship sitting on his chest. No, this was absurd; he was not standing here as his _best friend_ died from some stupid diplomatic incident that had gone mad.

And then that death rattle that Bones had heard in Jim’s breath faded, and it was far too quiet in the sickbay. Bones watched as all the monitors started flashing their alarms, but he couldn’t hear them. He was still listening to Jim, Jim who wasn’t saying anything, and whose breathing was far too quiet. Spock’s head was bent forward over Jim, maybe he could hear what Jim was saying, maybe Spock was speaking to him, Bones could see the Vulcan’s lips moving…

Apparently, Bones could cry when he was sober, too.


End file.
